European Trade Union Committee for Education

Following the national strike of 15 November 2017 and negotiations on 17 November 2017 with the Ministry of Education of Portugal who was represented by Alexandra Leitão, the State Secretary, ETUCE member organisations in Portugal, Federaçao Nacional dos Professores (FENPROF) and Federação Nacional dos Sindicatos da Educação (FNE), have recently signed a declaration committing education authorities and education trade unions to set the basis and framework to negotiate the defreeze of the teaching career progression and harmonise education personnel’s working time.

As ETUCE earlier reported, careers in the public sector in Portugal have been frozen for nearly ten year.

The main goals of this joint declaration between educations trade unions and the Portuguese State Secretary for Education are to:

• recognise that career thawing operates under the terms of article 19 of the proposed state budget law;
• to develop a negotiation process without prejudice to the provisions on the unfreezing of careers provided for in Article 19, in order to mitigate the impact of the unfreeze which ceases now, within the framework of the specificity of the teaching career, namely of its structuring in a single category and of a remuneration development model combining several elements
• define three fundamental variables as the basis for negotiating the model: time, way of recovery and the calendar in which this recovery will occur;
• negotiate in accordance the concrete model of career recomposition that will allow the recovery of service time;

This should result in the associated budgetary impacts being distributed in time while allowing for sustainability and compatibility with the available resources given the country's financial situation. The effects are expected to begin to produce from January 2018 and is expected to end in 2023.

Thus, as of 15 December 2017, a negotiation process is envisaged to start in order to determine the conditions for the recovery process.

To learn more about this joint declaration, please click here and here.